Again see what the snow reveals.

January 4. 

January 4, 2020

P. M. — To second stone bridge and down river. 

It is frozen directly under the stone bridge, but a few feet below the bridge it is open for four rods, and over that exceedingly deep hole, and again at that very swift and shallow narrow place some dozen rods lower. 

These are the only places open between this bridge and the mouth of the Assabet, except here and there a crack or space a foot wide at the springy bank just below the Pokelogan. 

It is remarkable that the deepest place in either of the rivers that I have sounded should be open, simply on account of the great agitation of the water there. This proves that it is the swiftness and not warmth that makes the shallow places to be open longest. 

In Hosmer's pitch pine wood just north of the bridge, I find myself on the track of a fox — as I take it — that has run about a great deal. Next I come to the tracks of rabbits, see where they have travelled back and forth, making a well-trodden path in the snow; and soon after I see where one has been killed and apparently devoured. There are to be seen only the tracks of what I take to be the fox. The snow is much trampled, or rather flattened by the body of the rabbit. It is somewhat bloody and is covered with flocks of slate-colored and brown fur, but only the rabbit's tail, a little ball of fur, an inch and a half long and about as wide, white beneath, and the contents of its paunch or of its entrails are left, — nothing more. 

Half a dozen rods further, I see where the rabbit has been dropped on the snow again, and some fur is left, and there are the tracks of the fox to the spot and about it. There, or within a rod or two, I notice a considerable furrow in the snow, three or four inches wide and some two rods long, as if one had drawn a stick along, but there is no other mark or track whatever; so I conclude that a partridge, perhaps scared by the fox, had dashed swiftly along so low as to plow the snow. 

But two or three rods further on one side I see more sign, and lo ! there is the remainder of the rabbit, — the whole, indeed, but the tail and the inward or soft parts, — all frozen stiff; but here there is no distinct track of any creature, only a few scratches and marks where some great bird of prey — a hawk or owl — has struck the snow with its primaries on each side, and one or two holes where it has stood. 

Now I understand how that long furrow was made, the bird with the rabbit in its talons flying low there, and now I remember that at the first bloody spot I saw some of these quill-marks; and therefore it is certain that the bird had it there, and probably he killed it, and he, perhaps disturbed by the fox, carried it to the second place, and it is certain that he (probably disturbed by the fox again) carried it to the last place, making a furrow on the way. 

If it had not been for the snow on the ground I probably should not have noticed any signs that a rabbit had been killed. Or, if I had chanced to see the scattered fur, I should not have known what creature did it, or how recently. 

But now it is partly certain, partly probable, — or, supposing that the bird could not have taken it from the fox, it is almost all certain, — that an owl or hawk killed a rabbit here last night (the fox-tracks are so fresh), and, when eating it on the snow, was disturbed by a fox, and so flew off with it half a dozen rods, but, being disturbed again by the fox, it flew with it again about as much further, trailing it in the snow for a couple of rods as it flew, and there it finished its meal without being approached. A fox would probably have torn and eaten some of the skin. 

When I turned off from the road my expectation was to see some tracks of wild animals in the snow, and, before going a dozen rods, I crossed the track of what I had no doubt was a fox, made apparently the last night, — which had travelled extensively in this pitch pine wood, searching for game. Then I came to rabbit-tracks, and saw where they had travelled back and forth in the snow in the woods, making a perfectly trodden path, and within a rod of that was a hollow in the snow a foot and a half across, where a rabbit had been killed. There were many tracks of the fox about that place, and I had no doubt then that he had killed that rabbit, and I supposed that some scratches which I saw might have been made by his frisking some part of the rabbit back and forth, shaking it in his mouth. I thought, Perhaps he has carried off to his young, or buried, the rest. 

But as it turned out, though the circumstantial evidence against the fox was very strong, I was mistaken. I had made him kill the rabbit, and shake and tear the carcass, and eat it all up but the tail (almost); but it seems that he didn't do it at [all], and apparently never got a mouthful of the rabbit.

 Something, surely, must have disturbed the bird, else why did it twice fly along with the heavy carcass? The tracks of the bird at the last place were two little round holes side by side, the dry snow having fallen in and concealed the track of its feet. It was most likely an owl, because it was most likely that the fox would be abroad by night. 

The sweet-gale has a few leaves on it yet in some places, partly concealing the pretty catkins. 

Again see what the snow reveals. Opposite Dodge's Brook I see on the snow and ice some fragments of frozen-thawed apples under an oak. How came they there? There are apple trees thirty rods off by the road. 

On the snow under the oak I see two or three tracks of a crow, and the droppings of several that were perched on the tree, and here and there is a perfectly round hole in the snow under the tree. I put down my hand and draw up an apple [out] of each, from beneath the snow. (There are no tracks of squirrels about the oak.) 

Crows carried these frozen-thawed apples from the apple trees to the oak, and there ate them, — what they did not let fall into the snow or on to the ice. 

See that long meandering track where a deer mouse hopped over the soft snow last night, scarcely making any impression. What if you could witness with owls' eyes the revelry of the wood mice some night, frisking about the wood like so many little kangaroos? Here is a palpable evidence that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen, — such populousness as commonly only the imagination dreams of. 

The circumstantial evidence against that fox was very strong, for the deed was done since the snow fell and I saw no other tracks but his at the first places. Any jury would have convicted him, and he would have been hung, if he could have been caught.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 4, 1860

A few feet below the bridge it is open for four rods, and over that exceedingly deep hole, and again at that very swift and shallow narrow place some dozen rods lower. These are the only places open between this bridge and the mouth of the Assabet See January 27, 1856 ("Walk on the river from the old stone to Derby’s Bridge. It is open a couple of rods under the stone bridge, but not a rod below it, and also for forty rods below the mouth of Loring’s Brook, along the west side, probably because this is a mill-stream. "); February 27, 1856 (Am surprised to see how the ice lasts on the river. . . . It has been tight . on North Branch except at Loring’s Brook and under stone bridge) since January 25th…That is, we may say that the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks.);


It is remarkable that the deepest place in either of the rivers that I have sounded should be open, simply on account of the great agitation of the water there. See January 22, 1855 ("(What a tumult at the stone bridge, where cakes of ice a rod in diameter and a foot thick are carried round and round by the eddy in circles eight or ten rods in diameter, and rarely get a chance to go down-stream, while others are seen coming up edgewise from below in the midst of the torrent! "); July16,1859 ("By building this narrow bridge here, twenty-five feet in width, or contracting the stream to about one fourth its average width, the current has been so increased as to wash away about a quarter of an acre of land and dig a hole six times the average depth of the stream, twenty-two and a half feet deep, . . deeper than any place in the main stream ...Yet the depth under the bridge is only two and a half feet plus. It falls in four rods from two and a half to twenty-two and a half....This is much the swiftest place on the stream thus far and deeper than any for twenty-five miles of [the] other stream, and consequently there is a great eddy, where I see cakes of ice go round and round in the spring,")

The woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

The circumstantial evidence against that fox was very strong. See November 11, 1850 ("Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.” ) See also January 2, 1856 (“As for the fox and rabbit race described yesterday, I find that the rabbit was going the other way, and possibly the fox was a rabbit.”)

Birch scales – falling all winter.

February 27

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Am surprised to see how the ice lasts on the river. 

It but just begins to be open for a foot or two at Merrick’s, and you see the motion of the stream. It has overflowed the ice for many rods a few feet in width. It has been tight even there (and of course everywhere else on the main stream, and on North Branch except at Loring’s Brook and under stone bridge) since January 25th, and elsewhere on the main stream since January 7th, as it still is. 

That is, we may say that the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks. 

On the 25th I saw a load of wood drawn by four horses up the middle of the river above Fair Haven Pond.  On that day, the 25th, they were cutting the last of Baker’s the greater part of it last winter, and this was the wood they were hauling off. 

I see many birch scales, freshly blown over the snow. They are falling all winter. 

Found, in the snow in E. Hosmer’s meadow, a gray rabbit’s hind leg, freshly left there, perhaps by a fox.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1856

The river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks. See February 12, 1856 ("Forty three days of uninterrupted cold weather.”); March 2, 1856 ("The opening in the river at Merrick’s is now increased to ten feet in width in some places."); March 12, 1856 ("The last four cold days have closed the river again against Merrick’s."); March 14, 1856 ("I still travel everywhere on the middle of the river."); March 20, 1856 ("The river has just begun to open at Hubbard’s Bend. It has been closed there since January 7th, i. e. ten weeks and a half."); March 22, 1856 ("I walk up the middle of the Assabet, and most of the way on middle of South Branch.");  April 3, 1856 ("The river is now generally and rapidly breaking up . . . It is now generally open about the town"); Compare February 17, 1857 ("The river is fairly breaking up . . . It is as open as the 3d of April last year, at least."); February 27, 1852 ("The North Branch, is open near Tarbell's and Harrington's, where I walked to-day, and, flowing with full tide bordered with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air, This restless and now swollen stream has burst its icy fetters."); See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, Ice-Out

Birch scales, freshly blown over the snow . . . falling all winter.  See  December 30, 1855 (“For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales . . .The high wind is scattering them over the snow there.”); January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it"); March 2, 1856 (" Surprised to see, on the snow over the river, a great many seeds and scales of birches, though the snow had so recently fallen, there had been but little wind, and it was already spring.. . . The birches appear not to have lost a quarter of their seeds yet . . . and when the river breaks up will be carried far away, to distant shores and meadows.") See also November 1, 1853 ("The white birch seeds begin to fall and leave the core bare.”); November 4, 1853 ("The fertile catkins of the yellow birch appear to be in the same state with those of the white, and their scales are also shaped like birds, but much larger"); November 4, 1860 ("The birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.");  December 4, 1854 ("Already the bird-like birch scales dot the snow.");  December 4 1856 ("I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. So bountiful a table is spread for the birds. For how many thousand miles this grain is scattered over the earth, under the feet of all walkers, in Boxboro and Cambridge alike! and rarely an eye distinguishes it."); December 6, 1859 ("No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders, — no doubt an ever-accessible food to numerous birds and perhaps mice."); December 18, 1852 ("Very cold, windy day. The crust of the slight snow covered in some woods with the scales (bird-shaped) of the birch, and their seeds."); January 7, 1853 ("Still the snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch, the small winged seeds or samarae and the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight . . .They cover the snow like coarse bran."); January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees.")

February 27.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  February 27 

See many birch scales

freshly blown over the snow –

falling all winter.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Birch scales – falling all winter

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560227

These terebinthine drops, each one reflecting the world, colorless as light.

March 9

March 9, 2015

A cloudy, rain-threatening day, not windy and rather warmer than yesterday. 

Painted the bottom of my boat. 

P. M. — To Andromeda Ponds. 

Scare up a rabbit on the hillside by these ponds, which was gnawing a smooth sumach. See also where they have gnawed the red maple, sweet-fern, Populus grandidentata, white and other oaks (taking off considerable twigs at four or five cuts), amelanchier, and sallow; but they seem to prefer the smooth sumach to any of these. With this variety of cheap diet they are not likely to starve. 

I get a few drops of the sweet red maple juice which has run down the main stem where a rabbit had nibbled off close a twig. The rabbit, indeed, lives, but the sumach may be killed. 

The heart-wood of the poison-dogwood, when I break it down with my hand, has a singular rotten, yellow look and a spirituous or apothecary odor.

I clamber over those great white pine masts which lie in all directions one upon another on the hillside south of Fair Haven, where the woods have been laid waste. 

I am struck, in favorable lights, with the jewel-like brilliancy of the sawed ends thickly bedewed with crystal drops of turpentine, thickly as a shield, as if pine-wood nymphs had seasonably wept there the fall of the tree. The perfect sincerity of these terebinthine drops, each one reflecting the world, colorless as light, is incredible when you remember how firm their consistency. And is this that pitch which you cannot touch without being defiled?

Looking from the Cliffs, the sun being invisible, I see far more light in the reflected sky in the neighborhood of the sun than I could see in the heavens from my position, and it occurred to me that the reason was that there was reflected to me from the river the view I should have got if I had stood there on the water in a more favorable position.  

I see that the mud in the road has crystallized as it dried (for it is not nearly cold enough to freeze), like the first crystals that shoot and set on water when freezing. 

I see the minute seeds of the Andromeda calyculata scattered over the melting ice of the Andromeda Ponds. 

An overcast and dark night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 9, 1855

Painted the bottom of my boat. See March 8, 1855 ("This morning I got my boat out of the cellar and turned it up in the yard to let the seams open before I calk it."); and March 15, 1854 ("Paint my boat.")

The hillside south of Fair Haven, where the woods have been laid waste. See March 6, 1855 ("There is hardly a wood lot of any consequence left but the chopper’s axe has been heard in it this season. They have even infringed fatally on White Pond, on the south of Fair Haven Pond, shaved ofl’ the topknot of the Cliffs, the Colburn farm, Beck Stow’s, etc., etc.")

These terebinthine drops, each one reflecting the world, colorless as light.  See March 24, 1853 ("The white pine wood, freshly cut, piled by the side of the Charles Miles road, is agreeable to walk beside. I like the smell of it, all ready for the borers, and the rich light-yellow color of the freshly split wood and the purple color of the sap at the ends of the quarters, from which distill perfectly clear and crystalline tears, colorless and brilliant as diamonds, tears shed for the loss of a forest in which is a world of light and purity, its life oozing out.")

I see far more light in the reflected sky in the neighborhood of the sun than I could see in the heavens from my position, and it occurred to me that the reason was that there was reflected to me from the river the view I should have got if I had stood there on the water. See December 8, 1853 (“I saw from the peak the entire reflection of large white pines very distinctly against a clear white sky, though the actual tree was completely lost in night against the dark distant hillside.”);  October 14, 1857 (“ The reflection exhibits such an aspect of the hill, apparently, as you would get if your eye were placed at that part of the surface of the pond where the reflection seems to be . . .[T]he reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition”);   November 2, 1857 ("The water tells me how it looks to it seen from below.”)

Colorless as light—

crystal drops of turpentine

reflecting the world.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, These terebinthine drops

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550309

Speed perspective

January 14

January 14, 2025

Skate to Baker Farm with a rapidity which astonished myself, before the wind, feeling the rise and fall, — the water having settled in the suddenly cold night,—which I had not time to see. 

(See the intestines of (apparently) a rabbit, — betrayed by a morsel of fur left on the ice — probably the prey of a fox.) 

A man feels like a new creature, a deer, perhaps, moving at this rate. He takes new possession of nature in the name of his own majesty. There was I, and there, and there. I judged that in a quarter of an hour I was three and a half miles from home without having made any particular exertion.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1855

Skate . . . with a rapidity which astonished myself. See January 15, 1855 (“Skate into a crack, and slide on my side twenty-five feet.”); December 29, 1858 ("We never cease to be surprised when we observe how swiftly the skater glides along.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

The intestines of (apparently) a rabbit, — betrayed by a morsel of fur left on the ice — probably the prey of a fox.  See  February 27, 1856 ("Found, in the snow in E. Hosmer’s meadow, a gray rabbit’s hind leg, freshly left there, perhaps by a fox. "); Compare January 2, 1856  (“As for the fox and rabbit race described yesterday, I find that the rabbit was going the other way, and possibly the fox was a rabbit.”); January 4, 1860 ("The snow . . . is somewhat bloody and is covered with flocks of slate-colored and brown fur, but only the rabbit's tail,. . . and the contents of its paunch or of its entrails are left, — nothing more . . . There were many tracks of the fox about that place, and I had no doubt then that he had killed that rabbit . . . But as it turned out, though the circumstantial evidence against the fox was very strong, I was mistaken.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

January 14. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 14

Skate before the wind 

there was I, and there, and there –

astonishing myself.

A man feels like a 

new creature, a deer, perhaps, 

moving at this rate.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Speed perspective

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550114

The perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape!

December 31, 2014

December 31.

On river to Fair Haven Pond. 

A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue. The pines look very dark. 

The white oak leaves are a cinnamon-color, the black and red oak leaves a reddish brown or leather-color. 

I see mice and rabbit and fox tracks on the meadow. Once a partridge rises from the alders and skims across the river at its widest part just before me; a fine sight. 

On the edge of A. Wheeler’s cranberry meadow I see the track of an otter made since yesterday morning. 

How glorious the perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1854

A beautiful, clear, not very cold day. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue. See December 20, 1854 ("The shadows of the Clamshell Hills are beautifully blue as I look back half a mile at them, and, in some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge."); January 1, 1855 ("We see the pink light on the snow within a rod of us. The shadow of the bridges on the snow is a dark indigo blue.")

I see mice and rabbit and fox tracks on the meadow. See December 31, 1855 ("I see many partridge-tracks in the light snow, where they have sunk deep amid the shrub oaks; also gray rabbit and deer mice tracks, for the last ran over this soft surface last night.") See also November 29, 1858 ("I see partridge and mice tracks and fox tracks, and crows sit silent on a bare oak-top."); December 12, 1859 ("The snow having come, we see where is the path of the partridge . . . and now first, as it were, we have the fox for our nightly neighbor, and countless tiny deer mice. "); December 22, 1852 ("The squirrel, rabbit, fox tracks, etc., attract the attention in the new-fallen snow . . . You cannot go out so early but you will find the track of some wild creature.")

I see the track of an otter made since yesterday morning. See December 31, 1853 ("Saw probably an otter's track, very broad and deep, as if a log had been drawn along . . . This animal probably I should never see the least trace of, were it not for the snow, the great revealer.");  See also December 6, 1856 (“Just this side of Bittern Cliff, I see a very remarkable track of an otter . . .The river was all tracked up with otters, from Bittern Cliff upward. Sometimes one had trailed his tail, apparently edge wise, making a mark like the tail of a deer mouse; sometimes they were moving fast, and there was an interval of five feet between the tracks.”);  January 21, 1853 (“I think it was January 20th that I saw that which I think an otter track in path under the Cliffs, — a deep trail in the snow, six or seven inches wide and two or three deep in the middle, as if a log had been drawn along, similar to a muskrat's only much larger, and the legs evidently short and the steps short, sinking three or four inches deeper still, as if it had waddled along.”); February 4, 1855 ("See this afternoon a very distinct otter-track by the Rock, at the junction of the two rivers.”); February 8, 1857 (“The otter must roam about a great deal, for I rarely see fresh tracks in the same neighborhood a second time the same winter, though the old tracks may be apparent all the winter through.”);  February 20, 1856 (“See a broad and distinct otter-trail, made last night or yesterday. It came out to the river through the low declivities, making a uniform broad hollow trail there without any mark of its feet. . . .Commonly seven to nine or ten inches wide, and tracks of feet twenty to twenty-four apart; but sometimes there was no track of the feet for twenty-five feet, frequently for six; in the last case swelled in the outline.”); February 22, 1856 (“Just below this bridge begins an otter track, several days old yet very distinct, which I trace half a mile down the river. In the snow less than an inch deep, on the ice, each foot makes a track three inches wide, apparently enlarged in melting. The clear interval, sixteen inches; the length occupied by the four feet, fourteen inches. It looks as if some one had dragged a round timber down the middle of the river a day or two since, which bounced as it went.”); March 6, 1856 ("On the rock this side the Leaning Hemlocks, is the track of an otter. "); March 31, 1857 ("The existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, is not betrayed to any of our senses (or at least not to more than one in a thousand)!"); April 6, 1855 ("it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen."); February 20, 1855 (among the quadrupeds of Concord, the otter is "very rare."); January 30, 1854 ("How retired an otter manages to live! He grows to be four feet long without any mortal getting a glimpse of him,"); January 21, 1853 ("Otter are very rare here now.”); and the Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared ; the otter is rarely if ever seen here at present; and the mink is less common than formerly.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Otter

The perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape. See December 31, 1855 ("It is one of the mornings of creation, and the trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun. There has been a mist in the night "); See also  December 9, 1856 ("A bewitching stillness reigns through all the woodland and over the snow-clad landscape.”); December 20, 1851 ("Red, white, green, and, in the distance, dark brown are the colors of the winter landscape."); January 2, 1854 ("I wish to get on to a hill to look down on the winter landscape."); January 24, 1852 ("The oaks are made thus to retain their leaves, that they may play over the snow-crust and add variety to the winter landscape.")

How glorious the

perfect stillness and peace of

the winter landscape.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape!

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-541231

The day is short – two twilights merely

Great winter itself 

reflecting rainbow colors

like a precious gem. 

December 11

We have now those early, still, clear winter sunsets over the snow. It is but mid-afternoon when I see the sun setting far through the woods, and there is that peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem.

The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day. You must make haste to do the work of the day before it is dark. 

I hear rarely a bird except the chickadee, or perchance a jay or crow.

A gray rabbit scuds away over the crust in the swamp on the edge of the Great Meadows beyond Peter’s. A partridge goes off, and, coming up, I see where she struck the snow first with her wing, making five or six as it were finger-marks.

C. says he found Fair Haven frozen over last Friday, i. e. the 8th. I find Flint’s frozen to-day,and how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 11, 1854

The morning and the evening twilight make the whole day. See   November 13, 1857 ("How speedily the night comes on now! There is some duskiness in the afternoon light before you are aware of it, the cows have gathered about the bars, waiting to be let out, and, in twenty minutes, candles gleam from distant windows, and the walk for this day is ended.");  November 27, 1853 ("The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk, . . . In December there will be less light than in any month in the year.”);  November 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.”); November 30, 1858 (“The short afternoons are come.");    December 9, 1856 ("The worker who would accomplish much these short days must shear a dusky slice off both ends of the night”); December 10, 1856 (“How short the afternoons! I hardly get out a couple of miles before the sun is setting”); December 12, 1859 ("The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky."); December 21, 1851 ("The morning and evening are one day.");  February 17, 1852 ("The shortness of the days, when we naturally look to the heavens and make the most of the little light, when we live an arctic life, when the woodchopper's axe reminds us of twilight at 3 o'clock p. m., when the morning and the evening literally make the whole day") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December Days

That peculiar clear vitreous greenish sky in the west, as it were a molten gem. See  December 11, 1855("Great winter itself looked like a precious gem, reflecting rainbow colors from one angle."); see also December 9, 1859 (“I observe at mid-afternoon that peculiarly softened western sky, . . .giving it a slight greenish tinge.”); December 14. 1851 ("There is a beautifully pure greenish-blue sky under the clouds now in the southwest just before sunset.");  December 20, 1854 ("The sky in the eastern horizon has that same greenish-vitreous, gem-like appearance which it has at sundown"); December 21, 1854 ("Fair Haven Pond, for instance, a perfectly level plain of white snow, untrodden as yet by any fisherman, surrounded by snow-clad hills, dark evergreen woods, and reddish oak leaves, so pure and still.")

A gray rabbit scuds away . . . A partridge goes off. See December 11, 1858 ("Already, in hollows in the woods and on the sheltered sides of hills, the fallen leaves are collected in small heaps on the snow-crust, simulating bare ground and helping to conceal the rabbit and partridge."); see also September 23, 1851("The partridge and the rabbit, — they still are sure to thrive like true natives of the soil, whatever revolutions occur."); November 18, 1851 (".Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound. . . .You must be conversant with things for a long time to know much about them,. . . as the partridge and the rabbit are acquainted with the thickets and at length have acquired the color of the places they frequent."); December 31, 1855 ("I see many partridge-tracks in the light snow, where they have sunk deep amid the shrub oaks; also gray rabbit and deer mice tracks.")

C. says he found Fair Haven frozen over last Friday, i. e. the 8th. See November 21, 1852 ("I am surprised this afternoon to find . . .Fair Haven Pond one-third frozen or skimmed over”); November 23, 1852("I am surprised to see Fair Haven entirely skimmed over.”) ; December 5, 1853 (" Fair Haven Pond is skimmed completely over."); December 7, 1856 ("Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond . . .The ice appears to be but three or four inches thick.”); December 8, 1850 ("A week or two ago Fair Haven Pond was December 9, 1856 (" Fair Haven was so solidly frozen on the 6th that there was fishing on it,"); December 9, 1859 ("The river and Fair Haven Pond froze over generally last night, though they were only frozen along the edges yesterday. This is unusually sudden."); December 21, 1855 (" Fair Haven is entirely frozen over, probably some days"); December 21, 1857 (" Walden and Fair Haven,. . .have only frozen just enough to bear me, “); December 25, 1853 ("Skated to Fair Haven and above.")

I find Flint’s frozen to-day,and how long? See December 4, 1853 ("Flint's Pond only skimmed a little at the shore, like the river."); December 9, 1856 (“Yesterday I met Goodwin bringing a fine lot of pickerel from Flint's, which was frozen at least four inches thick.”); 

December 11. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 11

The day is short and 

we now have these early still 

clear winter sunsets. 

By mid-afternoon 

I will see the sun setting 

far through the woods.

That peculiar

clear greenish sky in the west

like a molten gem.

Two twilights merely –

the morning and the evening

now make the whole day.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The day is short – two twilights merely

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

tinyurl.com/HDT541211

To Yellow Birch Swamp.

February 18.

How pleasant the sound of water flowing with a hollow sound under ice from which it has settled away, where great white air bubbles or hollows, seen through the ice and dark water, alternately succeed each other.

The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open. 

Rabbit-tracks numerous here, some times quite a highway of tracks over and along the frozen and snow-covered brook.

What a contrast between the upper and under side of many leaves. Many in which the contrast is finest are narrow, revolute leaves, like the delicate and beautiful Andromeda Polifolia: dark pure and uniform dull red above, strongly revolute, and delicate bluish white beneath. The handsome lanceolate leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia deserve to be copied on to works of art.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 18, 1854

The handsome lanceolate leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia. See January 10, 1855 ("Andromeda Polifolia, with its rich leaves turned to a mulberry-color above by the winter, with a bluish bloom and a delicate bluish white, as in summer, beneath, project above the ice, the tallest twigs recurved at top, with the leaves standing up on the upper side like teeth of a rake."); April 19 1852 ("That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. . . . These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world.”). Also note to May 5, 1855.

I see on ice by the riverside, front of N. Barrett's, very slender insects a third of an inch long, with grayish folded wings reaching far behind and two antennæ.

Somewhat in general appearance like the long wasps.

At the old mill - site, saw two pigeon woodpeckers dart into and out of a white oak. Saw the yellow under sides of their wings. It is barely possible I am mistaken, but, since Wilson makes them common in Pennsylvania in winter, I feel pretty sure.

Such sights make me think there must be bare ground not far off south.

It is a little affecting to walk over the hills now, looking at the reindeer lichens here and there amid the snow, and remember that ere long we shall find violets also in their midst.

What an odds the season makes! The birds know it.

Whether a rose - tinted water lily is sailing amid the pads, or Neighbor Hobson is getting out his ice with a cross - cut saw, while his oxen are eating their stalks.

I noticed that the ice which Garrison cut the other day contained the lily pads and stems within it.

How different their environment now from when the queenly flower, floating on the trembling surface, exhaled its perfume amid a cloud of insects!

Hubbard's wooded hill is now almost bare of trees.

Barberries still hang on the bushes, but all shrivelled.

I found a bird's nest of grass and mud in a barberry bush filled full with them.

It must have been done by some quadruped or bird.

The curls of the yellow birch bark form more or less parallel straight lines up and down on all sides of the tree, like parted hair blown aside by the wind, or as when a vest bursts and blows open.

Rabbit - tracks numerous there, sometimes quite a highway of tracks over and along the frozen and snow - covered brook.

How pleasant the sound of water flowing with a hollow sound under ice from which it has settled away, where great white air bubbles or hollows, seen through the ice and dark water, alternately succeed each other.

The Mitchella repens berries look very bright amid the still fresh green leaves.

In the birch swamp west of this are many red (?) squirrel nests high in the birches. They are composed within of fibres of bark. I see where the squirrels have eaten walnuts along the wall and left the shells on the snow.

Channing has some microscopic reading these days. But he says in effect that these works are purely material. The idealist views things in the large.

I read some of the speeches in Congress about the Nebraska Bill, - a thing the like of which I have not done for a year. What trifling upon a serious subject! while honest men are sawing wood for them outside. Your Congress halls have an ale-house odor, - a place for stale jokes and vulgar wit. It compels me to think of my fellow-creatures as apes and baboons.

What a contrast between the upper and underside of many leaves, — the indurated and colored upper side and the tender, more or less colorless under side, - male and female, even where they are almost equally exposed!

The underside is commonly white, however, as turned away from the light toward the earth.

Many in which the contrast is finest are narrow, revolute leaves, like the delicate and beautiful Andromeda Polifolia, the ledum, Kalmia glauca.

De Quincey says that “The ancients had no experimental knowledge of severe climates.”

Neither have the English at home as compared with us of New England, nor we, compared with the Esquimaux.

This is a common form of the birch scale, black, I think, — not white, at any rate.

The handsome lanceolate leaves of the Andromeda Polifolia, dark but pure and uniform dull red above, strongly revolute, and of a delicate bluish white beneath, deserve to be copied on to works of art.

At Gowing's Swamp

February 17.

At Gowing's Swamp I see where someone hunted white rabbits yesterday, and perhaps the day before, with a dog. The hunter has run round and round it on firm ground, while the hare and dog have cut across and circled about amid the blueberry bushes. 

The track of the white rabbit is gigantic compared with that of the gray one. Indeed few of our wild animals make a larger track with their feet alone. Where I now stand, the track of all the feet has an expanse of seven to fifteen inches, — this at intervals of from two to three feet, — and the width at the two fore feet is five inches. There is a considerable but slighter impression of the paw behind each foot.

The mice-tracks are very amusing. It is surprising how numerous they are, and yet I rarely ever see one. They must be nocturnal in their habits. Any tussocky ground is scored with them. I see, too, where they have run over the ice in the swamp, there is a mere sugaring of snow on it, ever trying to make an entrance to get beneath it. 

You see deep and distinct channels in the snow in some places, as if a whole colony had long travelled to and fro in them, a highway, a well-known trail, — but suddenly they will come to an end; and yet they have not dived beneath the surface, for you see where the single traveller who did it all has nimbly hopped along as if suddenly scared, making but a slight impression, squirrel like, on the snow. The squirrel also, though rarely, will make a channel for a short distance.

 

These mice tracks are of various sizes, and sometimes, when they are large and they have taken long and regular hops nine or ten inches apart in a straight line, they look at a little distance like a fox-track. 

I suspect that the mice sometimes build their nests in bushes from the foundation, for, in the swamp-hole on the new road, where I found two mice-nests last fall, I find one begun with a very few twigs and some moss, close by where the others were, at the same height and also on prinos bushes, - plainly the work of mice wholly. 

In the open part of Gowing's Swamp I find the Andromeda Polifolia. Neither here nor in Beck Stow's does it grow very near the shore. In these swamps, then, you have three kinds of andromeda. The main swamp is crowded with high blueberry, panicled andromeda, prinos, swamp-pink, etc., etc., and then in the middle or deepest part will be an open space not yet quite given up to water, where the Andromeda calyculata and a few A. Polifolia reign almost alone. 

These are pleasing gardens.

In the early part of winter there was no walking on the snow, but after January, perhaps, when the snow-banks had settled and their surfaces, many times thawed and frozen, become indurated, in fact, you could walk on the snow-crust pretty well.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 17, 1854

The open part of Gowing's Swamp. See August 23, 1854 (I improve the dry weather to examine the middle of Gowing's Swamp. There is in the middle an open pool, twenty or thirty feet in diameter . . .”); May 31, 1857 ("That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp is its very navel, omphalos, where the umbilical cord was cut that bound it to creation's womb.. . .”); January 30 1858 ("The pool, where there is nothing but water and sphagnum to be seen and where you cannot go in the summer, is about two rods long and one and a half wide")

The track of the white rabbit. See February 3, 1856 ("You may now observe plainly the habit of the rabbits to run in paths about the swamps.")

The mice-tracks are very amusing. It is surprising how numerous they are, and yet I rarely ever see one. They must be nocturnal. See January 31, 1856 ("Perhaps the tracks of the mice are the most amusing of any, they take such various forms and, though small, are so distinct. . . .The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding. They commence and terminate in the most insignificant little holes by the side of a twig or tuft, and occasionally they give us the type of their tails very distinctly, even sidewise to the course on a bank-side.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

In the swamp-hole on the new road, where I found two mice-nests last fall, I find one begun with a very few twigs and some moss, close by where the others were. See October 8, 1853 ("Find a bird's nest converted into a mouse's nest in the prinos swamp, while surveying on the new Bedford road to-day, topped over with moss, and a hole on one side, like a squirrel-nest."); February 3, 1856 ("Track some mice to a black willow by riverside, just above spring, against the open swamp; and about three feet high, in apparently an old woodpecker’s hole, was probably the mouse-nest") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

In the open part of Gowing's Swamp I find the Andromeda Polifolia. Neither here nor in Beck Stow's does it grow very near the shore. See November 23, 1857 ("This swamp appears not to have had any natural outlet, though an artificial one has been dug. The same is perhaps the case with the C. Miles Swamp. And is it so with Beck Stow's These three are the only places where I have found the Andromeda Polifolia.")

In the early part of winter there was no walking on the snow, but after January. . . you could walk on the snow-crust pretty well. See January 27, 1860 ("After the January thaw we have more or less of crusted snow, i. e. more consolidated and crispy. When the thermometer is not above 32 this snow for the most part bears"); February 8, 1852 ("Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on. It is pleasant to walk over the fields raised a foot or more above their summer level, and the prospect is altogether new."); February 13, 1856 (" A very firm and thick, uneven crust, on which I go in any direction across the fields, stepping over the fences."); February 19, 1855 ("Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields and for the most part over the fences.")

February 17. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 17

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  At Gowing's Swamp

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

 tinyurl.com/hdt-540217